


Aristophanes at Athens

by Prochytes



Category: ARISTOPHANES - Works
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-25
Updated: 2012-06-25
Packaged: 2017-11-08 12:45:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Prochytes/pseuds/Prochytes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A comic dramatist muses on the State We're In.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Aristophanes at Athens

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written to a request for how an ancient Greek dramatist would view the contemporary crisis in the Eurozone.

  
  
Your poet is gay after two point five k of years in the kingdom of Hades.  
  
But he looks at his city, and thinks it’s a pity – he says it’s all down to the ladies.  
  
Where once there was war because Pericles’ horny young lady had mislaid her baking,  
  
We’ve now lost our tarts in more northerly parts of the Europe that’s half of our making.  
  
Where once there were sardines in Hellas’s jar, now the seas for our markets are sprat-less,  
  
And so we must bow to the will of the _Frau_ who distinctly lacks arts with an atlas.  
  
It’s known to the Greeks: whenever one speaks who claims to be prudence’s keeper,  
  
He lends you a spade so the hole that you’ve made can be dug just that little bit deeper.  
  
Just think back to Troy, how the suits jumped for joy when the forecaster Calchas was sunny  
  
And established the tone of the first Eurozone in their squabbles for slave-girls and money.  
  
They once led to slaughter the King’s fairest daughter to be a peeved goddess’s sweetmeat;  
  
And now call for calm when the treasury’s balm is a haircut delivered in Fleet Street.  
  
The Euro (how sad!) has become mum and dad – and so we might _Oedipus Rex_ it;  
  
You go in like thunder, you come out like chunder, a speedy and bilious Grexit.  
  
Cue fist-fights and thugs, cue frauds and cue mugs, cue demagogues, Fascists, and marchers.  
  
Things get out of hand in Cloudcuckooland – and now all that’s left is _The Archers_.  
  


FINIS

 


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